My personal favorite - My own "Tuna Noodle Casserole" - Herein lies the Orange Cheese Rant

I could honestly eat this every single day, but I just don't eat that much tuna.

Bow-tie pasta. If you are one of those unfortunate souls that chooses to continue to read my crazy blog you will eventually find out that I am a stickler for many things, random things, not things that make any kind of sense to anyone else. I do not follow recipes, I do not care if you put 8 or 10 eggs in your dish, I do not believe the hype about measuring everything to a T just because you are baking it. I do not own measuring spoons, that's right no measuring spoons for me. I had a set of porcelain ones that were given to me as a gift, broke 'em (I mean come on, porcelain?) and never replaced them. If you use milk instead of heavy cream so be it. Salted butter instead of sweet butter, whatever! So if there is something that I do become crazy about, you gotta cut me a little slack.

Bow-tie pasta. This dish actually tastes better with bow-tie pasta than with any other pasta. Just trust me. Or don't trust me, make it seven times, feed it to your friends in a blind taste test and then come back and tell me which one won. Or don't tell me, I already know. Bow-tie pasta.

Boil your bow-tie pasta in salty water. How salty you ask? Add what amount of salt you feel is appropriate and then double it, that is how salty. While your water is coming to a boil/pasta is cooking here is the list of what you need to prepare.

Shred a bunch of cheddar cheese. Here is my pontification on cheddar cheese. Do you know that America is one of the few places with orange cheddar cheese? It is not because our fancy American cows have orange milk though. It is because we dye our cheese. Yup, that's right, we dye it. Why? No good reason. In fact the dye is bad for you, it causes inflammation in the connective tissues in your body. Kraft uses Yellow #5, as do many other companies. Oh wait, let me correct myself, they took out yellow #5 in all products shipping to Europe or Australia because their governments/markets demanded it. Can I put this into perspective for a moment? BP, the now infamous oil company, did not employ safety measures that it uses offshore all over Europe in the Gulf. Were these measures mandatory offshore in Europe? Nope, they just did it out of the kindness of their hearts. But here in the good ole US of A, no extra safety measures, just catastrophic oil spills. Would those safety measures have stopped this spill? Who knows? Maybe, maybe not. Still kind of a stab in the back a little though. So does yellow #5 give your kid autism, ADHD, arthritis? Who knows? But at least it's not giving it to kids in Europe and Australia, thank god!

Kay, I'm done.

So shred up some cheddar cheese. If you use orange at least use organic so that natural dyes are being used.

Here is the hilarious part. Open up a can of tuna. Why on earth would a girl that goes psycho about orange cheese and yellow #5 tell you to open up a mercury ridden can of tuna? I pick and choose my battles. I eat cheese WAY more than I eat tuna, so it matters more. Drain your tuna and set aside.

Pull out some milk and butter. Ummm... maybe two big hunks of butter. I was gonna say pats of butter, but go big. As for the milk, somewhere between a short glass and a tall glass. Pull out some frozen peas. You can also use frozen edamame, yum.

Once your noodles have been cooking for a bit but are still kinda tough throw in the peas. Cook your noodles to al dente aka you still have to use your teeth to chew them. Drain you pasta pea mixture. Best way to do this: Suit up with oven mits, put the lid on the pot and hold it in place while you tilt the pot over in the sink. You may lose a noodle, but you won't have to wash a colander. Return pot to stove, put on low heat, add butter and milk. Stir until melted. Add tons of cheese and tuna. Stir it up till everything is melty and sticky. Add a ton of cracked black pepper, a tiny bit of salt to taste and whatever else you can come up with.

Some additions that I use if I have them:

Parm cheese - careful of the saltiness when you do this.

Sour cream

Yogurt

Different veggies - just make sure you time it right so they can cook all the way in the water

Shredded chicken instead of tuna

Other types of cheese

halved cherry tomatoes

Serve it up! This seriously should not take you more than 15 minutes. If it does, let me know and I will come over and fix you.

Kisses!